GIG reference manual

the render menu

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Section contents

Introduction
The render menu can be used to render your models. There are two types or renderers available: raytrace and raysketch.
The raytracer ensures the most realistic rendering of your model. It will calculate shadows, reflection, and refractions as though in the real world.

The raysketcher will render your model with a unique painterly quality which can be determined by selecting from several 'pattern' tools representing specific textured effects. Because of its speed, the raysketcher is also a usefull tool for previewing materials on your model. Animations can be rendered as well using the raysketcher.
The active camera window, or a subsection of it, can be rendered using render window. The rendered images can then be saved using save picture (images will be stored in the 'intdump' directory of the active project).

Animation or still files can be rendered using render ani or render still (images will be stored in the 'production' directory of the active project). An alternative way to do this is with the utility gig(ani)batch. Still and animation files can also be rendered on multiple CPU's or workstations (when available) using the gigrs utility.

The quality of the rendering can be adjusted by specifing the index for anti-aliasing, soft shadow, sight distance, refraction, reflection, depth of field, and motion blur.

Maps and sequences of images and colors can be specified for the background, the environment (reflection mapping), neut color, and haze color.

How to speed up rendering
Before rendering a large job, consider the following to speed up your rendering:

Rendering to special formats
There are two render buttons that do not render to a normal 2D image, but to a special format: